


Are you smarter than...

by cognomen



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-19
Updated: 2010-02-19
Packaged: 2017-10-07 09:17:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Diefenbaker goes missing, Fraser and Ray consider 10 years together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Are you smarter than...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lucifuge_5](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lucifuge_5).



His mind is wandering all over the place today, slowly meandering about in a fog that refuses to let his thoughts get more than two feet in any direction, and so they push about two feet in every direction. Currently, he's staring at his fourth (fifth?) cup of coffee, trying to remember, between how many M&amp;M's are left in the bag in his hand and how the coffee tasted, how many he'd put in the cup. The top part had been fine, the bottom is thick with chocolate, suggesting he had also probably forgotten to stir it well enough.

  


Ray Kowalski is just having one of those days.  This never used to happen, he's pretty sure. Or maybe he just doesn't remember it, because his body was younger back then and he could be up all night with Fraser on some stupid stakeout to find out who was stealing all the jelly donuts from the neighborhood bakery or whatever. 

  


His mind gets that far, then sharply deviates left at the thought of jelly donuts, but then he thinks about how the doctors had told him to start limiting his sugar intakes now that he was 'getting older' and what the hell did that mean exactly, anyway - and his mood just about ruins itself in time for Lieutenant Ramirez to spot him staring blandly into space.

  


"Kowalski!"  She barks - she is really loud given her size. Ray isn't really super tall, meaning he doesn't tower over everyone like Fraser does, but the Lieut barely comes nose-even with his collar bone, so she likes to get him when he's sitting and he has to look up at her, like right now. "Where are your field reports?" 

  


Ray glances at his laptop - boy does he really hate that thing.  It's not that the technology itself has made his job harder, it's just that he doesn't see what was so bad about paper reports and filing cabinets instead of all the backups and department wide servers that apparently are necessary now. It was really, really hard to delete an entire document if you were holding it in your hand. 

  


"They're in the reports folder thingie." Ray says, helpfully. The technical term refuses to wander into his mind, so he does his best to describe the visual cue on the computer screen.  "I put them in yesterday, maybe the network doodad isn't picking them up again."

  


"Today's, I mean." Ramirez says, putting her big hands on her wide hips. She is like the classic picture of a curvy woman, and super tough. She has this curly hair that's to die for, and she really is pretty, but in a sort of 'this lady could lift you up over her head and break you over her knee if you piss her off' kind of way. When Lieutenant Welsh had finally retired three years ago (probably the only reason he hadn't died of congestive heart failure yet, Ray thinks), they'd gone to several other officers in the department about promotions, but not Ray. Seems like in the end they'd made the right choice.

  


Ray isn't bitter about it.  

  


"Oh look at that." He says suddenly, glancing up at the clock behind her shoulder. He hasn't been in the field yet today - his mind just won't stay focused to the point  "It's time for lunch."

  


Fraser is standing outside, because it's eleven thirty and as much as he can't make his own schedule now the way he used to, he makes the schedule for the whole Canadian embassy instead so he always gets his lunch at the same time Ray does. It's a nice perk, Ray thinks, as he shrugs into his jacket. 

  


"Frayz." He greets, and when he smiles he can almost feel all the lines building up on his face like they're getting ready to settle in worse than they already have. "C'mon let's get out of here. My mind just won't sit still today."

  


Fraser's smile greets his own, and for a moment, the fog in his mind lifts. It's been a long, crazy ten years, Ray thinks as he shoves his hands into his coat pockets. Times had changed a bit - every day did not involve some kind of crazy adventure, because neither Ray  nor Fraser could keep up with that kind of pace anymore. They tried to limit themselves to three or four a week now, considering the toll it took on their sleep and even if Fraser was supermountie, he still had to do paperwork now, too. 

  


"How's the planning for that, um, thing going? The festival thing?"

  


"The Canadian Arts and Culture Appreciation Festival?" Fraser says, long experience telling him how to interpret Ray's clues as to what he was currently thinking about, despite his inability to fully articulate what he means. 

  


"Yeah, that."

  


"Well, I finished arranging the guests." Fraser says, and then he rolls his shoulders and looks skyward. Fraser has been undergoing this 'what am I doing with my life' stage at this point, and Ray can kind of understand it, except it's Fraser, who is about the only person he knows who would have that kind of moment over having a respectable job as the head of the Chicago Canadian consulate. Only Fraser would want to be out in the middle of the wilderness tracking criminals across nowhere and eating pemmican instead. 

  


He was getting too old for it, though, as Ray told him. Really, what Ray meant was that he, himself was getting way too old for it - had already been too old for it when Fraser had met him, but had kicked his own ass into gear just so he could go along with Fraser. Now they compromised - they still 'vacationed' in Canada, which involved an uncomfortable amount of ice and snow, but they did it in a place with heat at least. 

  


"You got the country singer, right?" Ray asks, whacking Fraser on the shoulders with his open palm to draw Fraser out of his thoughts. "I know you were a little worried about her possibly making it."

  


Fraser nods, and then reaches out to hold the door of the sub place open for Ray. This is another compromise - Ray has agreed to mostly lay off the fast food for at least two meals a day - usually breakfast and lunch, because they both got home at different times, and while Fraser was a great cook, and Ray could manage pasta, they were both usually too busy with relaxing to cook.  

  


Ray stops halfway through the door and gives Fraser a frank look. "You're not gonna sing, right? Last time, Diefenbaker howled for a week 'cause you said he was jealous."

  


"It's not my intention to, Ray." Fraser says, matter-of-fact, but he smiles a little.  "I would hate to reopen an old wound in Diefenbaker's pride."

  


"Yeah, this time I'm gonna howl for a week." Ray moves forward, and he can feel the sour expression form on his face when he realizes he can look forward to another lettuce-on-bread type of meal. But he promised, and he has to admit that the few extra pounds he'd put on a couple years back have faded away, and he's the lean, mean, Ray-machine again.

  


Besides, Fraser has to eat the same thing, no moose jerky or whatever, it's part of the deal. They sit down away from the counter, and Ray slides his tray around a little, wishing there was meat on his sandwich.

  


"How's the case going?" Fraser asks, almost jealously, but Ray looks up and rolls his eyes toward the ceiling.

  


"The guy's lawyer has got this whole chain of custody debate going with the forensics guys. You remember when it was just 'bing-bang, this guy did it, let's send him to jail?'" Ray, forgetting that he doesn't want to eat his sandwich, finds himself eating it anyway. Fraser knows him well enough by now to know that when Ray talks, Ray likes to eat too. It's a habit. "Now it's if Charlie passed the bag to Nikki or Paula when he was done processing and if he can't even remember which assistant crime scene processor he passed the bag to, how can his testimony be counted as accurate and blah blah blah."

  


Ray looks sourly down at his sandwich,  and then has another bite. 

  


"Sounds like he's grasping at straws." Fraser says. Ray nods.

  


"It's just annoying. I mean, they just pull at whatever they can even though they know they have a guilty client. And the system just keeps giving 'em more straws."

  


It's just talking, but even just having someone to listen, it unwinds Ray. It helps him so much, because Fraser doesn't even say anything. He knows that Ray doesn't expect Fraser to fix the whole world - even if Ray seems to be practically the only one who sees that bright red uniform and doesn't expect it - Ray just needs someone to listen to him. He needs to verbally expel all the gunk jamming up his brain and keeping his thoughts running around in circles like tigers at a fence.

  


"The Lieut was all over me yesterday to get out there and do the interview," Ray continues, eating still, picking up globs of lettuce and popping them into his mouth with his fingers as they escape.  "But I hate grilling our own guys over stupid stuff like that. I think the guy just said Nikki one time 'cause she is fine and his mind was not a hundred percent in the game, but now I have to go clean that up by being the bad-guy-why's-the-lawyer-asking-these-questions-man."

  


"I'm sorry, Ray." Fraser says, looking up at him, with his head angled down from where he's eating.  It's Ray's thoughts that suddenly aren't in the game, and he takes a good long, steadying blink as he reaches for his drink. 

  


"Yeah, it's okay, Frayz." Ray says, suddenly feeling better. "I just needed to wake up a little more. "

  


Fraser has this talent, Ray thinks. Well, he has a lot of talents, really, but the talent that Ray is thinking of right now is the one that lets him make Ray feel better just by him being Fraser. He must be looking pretty intently at the mountie, because Fraser's brows draw in a little in question, and Ray just shakes his head and wraps up the other half of his lettuce sandwich before he stuffs it in his coat pocket to eat later at his desk when he's hungry enough to actually tolerate a lettuce sandwich.

  


They both get up, pushing in their chairs. They both have an innate sense of the passing of time, and having had lunch together like this countless times before, they both realize how little time they actually have to regain their sanity together over the course of a day.

  


Fraser holds the door again on the way out. 

  


"You going to be late at the consulate again tonight?" Ray asks - he hates when Fraser has to stay late, because he really doesn't like coming home to a dark house that's empty, but at least he knows Diefenbaker will be there to greet him. He also hates it because when Fraser sits more than four or five hours in his chair, his leg starts to act up again and he hates to see Fraser in pain.

  


"A little bit, but I don't anticipate too long, Ray." Fraser says, and he gives one of his sideways 'plenty of time for us' looks that starts a shock right at the center of Ray's shoulder blades and travels in a straight and sudden line downward. All he's aware of doing is allowing a big, doofy grin to spread over his features, as he digests the information. 

  


"I'll get dinner on the way home, then." Is what Ray manages, at last, before he reaches out to grab Fraser's wrist - his hand doesn't quite touch thumb-to-pointer around Fraser's wrist, and it always makes him feel so much more solid and there than Stella ever had been.  Pretty much everyone knows, already, about the two of them. Everyone important, anyway, but since Ray's a police detective and Fraser's position is also public, they aren't as open about it as sometimes Ray would like to be. "I'll see you later, Frayz. Remember, no singing."

  


"Understood, Ray."

  


-

  


He and Dief have kind of come to this understanding. They conspire against Fraser, because Fraser is some kind of super-hero and doesn't believe in eating 'junk food', a definition he gives to just about anything that's tasty and Ray likes to eat.  Donuts are pretty much right out, but he and the wolf both aren't ready to give those up yet, even in their advancing ages.  So in the mornings, they both take their glucosamine horse pills together, because Dief's just as stiff in the knees now as Ray is.  Ray doesn't even have to stick it in a hot dog or anything, but Diefenbaker stares right at him as he takes his, the same way he makes sure the wolf chews and swallows. 

  


Fraser, of course, is still superman. Either that or he just deals better with his joints feeling like they're made out of some kind of sand instead of whatever it is they're supposed to be.  Cartilage. 

  


Anyway, it was a rocky start - Diefenbaker felt a bit threatened by Ray's turtle,  but eventually Ray had won the wolf over with treats and reassurances that the turtle was, after all, just a turtle. He'd had the thing since grade school, and if Diefenbaker really wanted a bargaining chip he was probably the only one who knew the things name was Donatello.

  


Yep, true man-child of the 80's at heart.  

  


So they get along really good now, Ray and the wolf and the turtle and the mountie, even if all that sounds like a title for the worst sitcom ever, Ray would live in the worst sitcom ever if it meant his life kept on going as great as it was.

  


Ray gets home and he braces himself into the door automatically for Diefenbaker's insistent greeting. He's used to the wolf springing up when he gets home, and he lifts his cup of coffee and the sandwich he's been eating on the ride home up above wolf-level. It means he has to maneuver the door with his hip, leaning into it with his arms raised to head level as he turned around to kick the door shut like some kind of crazed, fast food spokesperson - slash- ballerina. 

  


Today, something's different though. 

  


"Dief?" He calls, when he realizes there is no forthcoming assault of white fur, no sharp nose targeting his big-bacon-deluxe-heart stopper-combo. Diefenbaker loved bacon - he could sense it from a mile away, like he had this bacon-sense. The house is dark. The wolf isn't on top of Ray already.

  


Something's wrong. And oh shit, Ray thinks, fifteen year old bacon junkie wolf. The coffee hits the floor and he shoves the sandwich onto the hall table with his keys in a big jumble.  He had never thought about how Dief was getting old, now - well, apparently his subconscious had, because the first thought to come into his mind was that the wolf had crawled away to die in the back of the closet or was very sick, or had had some kind of wolf-stroke, if wolves could even have strokes. 

  


He pounds down the hall with his shoes on and nearly kills himself on Fraser's ridiculous oriental runner when it slips up and then kinks in the middle and tries to trip him, but all his 'danger time Ray' instincts are kicking in now, and he catches himself in the doorway to their room, both his hands flying out wide to catch the door frame.

  


Pile of laundry - Ray's.  Red longjohns hanging from a clothesline strung in the half-bath off one side of the room - Fraser's. Bed - made. Corners - empty. Closet door - closed. 

  


No Diefenbaker. 

  


"Diefenbaker?" Ray tries again, and there's no tell-tale click of wolf-nails on the hardwood floor to reassure him. He checks the big bathroom, the living room, all of the closets even the one that only had the Christmas decorations in it, and finally the creepy basement full of spiders and gross that he made Fraser go down into with a mop every now and again to clean the cobwebs out of but otherwise refuses to acknowledge. He clunks down three of the steps, peers under the overhang from the kitchen left and right, and sees no sign of Diefenbaker. 

  


He's pulling down the trapdoor that leads into the attic, unleashing a cloud of dust into the hallway when the front door opens and closes again. A sudden idea hits Ray that makes him feel like an idiot, and he runs back down the hall, skidding to a stop.

  


"Hey, Frayz," He says, and realizes how breathless he sounds from all the running around frantically. He's getting out of shape. Fraser is frowning at the sandwich on the 'correspondence table', which is what he calls the hall table where they both dump all the mail, and Ray  notices that Dief didn't come in with him, either, because a. the bacon burger is still there and b. the wolf isn't right there. He asks anyway. "You didn't take Dief with you to work this morning did you?"

  


"Well, no Ray." Fraser says, his eyebrows creasing into a worried line as he follows Ray's point right on down the trail of thought. "As you know he's retired from active duty, considering his arthritis and advanced age he feels he's earned himself the right to stay home and watch rubbish on television."

  


Ray does not know how to say what he needs to. He just freezes up, blocking the door into the hall with his body, and runs mentally over what on earth could have happened in his head. When he'd got home the side door was locked. Neither he nor Fraser regularly used the front door. Diefenbaker was never left in the back yard, because he had an immaculate track record of no in-house accidents. 

  


Fraser is just staring at him, like someone needs to say it. Ray notices the little gray  hairs at his temples, because Fraser is holding his hat in his hands, like he'd come home any number of thousands of other times, ready to do his whole 'hat on the rack, mountie pants and jacket carefully ironed and regular clothes go on' routine.  But today, something big is missing from that routine - the 'get jumped on by an enthusiastic wolf' part.

  


"He's missing." Ray says at last. Fraser looks unbelieving.

  


"Seriously, he didn't run up when I got home and that burger has been on that table for almost a whole hour, Fraser. The wolf's not here, and I think I know how to spot a big fuzzy white wolf when I am looking for one, okay? The door was locked when I got home and everything, and he is seriously not in the house." Ray finds that when he starts talking, he can't stop doing it. Fraser's eyebrows are drawing further and further inward in increments, making a confused valley between them as Ray tries to explain. "And I have looked everywhere, so unless he went with you, or somehow let himself out and locked the door behind him, I don't even know. I was going to go up into the attic."

  


"How would Diefenbaker get into the attic?" Fraser asks at last. He lifts his hand to the top of his head, hanging his hat on the hook to do his whole Fraser-logic-thing. His other hand  rests at his hip, and it looks like he's holding his weight off of his bad leg. Ray shrugs his shoulders dramatically.

  


"It's the only place I haven't looked, and I'd kill myself if he were up there and I missed it somehow because I didn't expect it." Ray says, and then heads back into the hall, leaving Fraser to think. The stairs from the attic fold out in three sections, and Ray has only worked the contraption once, so he narrowly misses braining himself with the ladder as he extends it. 

  


"He's not in the back?" Fraser asks, coming up behind him. He's taken off his jacket and is pushing up the sleeves of the longjohns he wears underneath it regardless of temperature. Ray shakes his head, and then starts up the ladder, which groans metallically as he stomps up it. There's a string at the top that works a pull-chain to turn on the light, and when he yanks it, nothing happens. 

  


"Nope. Light bulb's out up  here, Fraser, will you bring me the flashlight and a spare?" Ray's mind is settling into this grim determination to get his task done. Fraser, looking up at him from the hall, nods once, and then disappears. Ray sits down at the top of the stairs and looks out across the attic. 

  


"Dief, you aren't up here, are you? No hard feelings if you are, man. I got a bacon burger downstairs, buddy, you are missing out." Ray bargains with the silence, which answers predictably.  Fraser doesn't even comment on Ray's bribe of food he doesn't endorse, instead he just solemnly hands up the flashlight and bulb to where Ray sits on the top step of the ladder, coming up the first two and peering worriedly up at the darkness.

  


"You don't think he got out?" Ray asks, as he tightens the battery compartment cover on the flashlight - Fraser leaves it loose to spare the batteries. "I mean, somehow, and then somehow locked the door behind him - Dief's pretty smart."

  


"He doesn't have a key, Ray. And he's missing his favorite gameshow." Fraser's logic, while odd when one applies it to a wolf instead of like, grandpa Fred, is pretty sound. Diefenbaker really loves 'Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader' for some reason. Ray clicks the flashlight on, and points it up to replace the light bulb on the end of the string, which he clicks on when he's done. The circle of light doesn't touch the furthest corners of the attic - which is unfinished. 

  


Fluffy pink puffs of insulation lie nestled between each of the support beams, but Ray doesn't trust himself to move along those if he doesn't have to - he'd probably wind up putting his foot through the ceiling into the bathroom or something. He directs the beam along the attic. No wolf. No sign of a wolf having ever been up here. There's one musty old cardboard box in the corner, probably from the previous owner, since neither he nor Fraser has enough stuff to bother storing it anywhere up here.

  


"No dice," He says down, to Fraser's worried face. 

  


"Ah." Fraser says, like he was expecting it. Of course he was expecting it, how would Dief get into the attic - the same way he'd get out the door and lock it again, it didn't happen. Fraser backs off the ladder, and Ray eases down it awkwardly.

  


"He's been dognapped. Wolfnapped." Ray says, and he folds the ladder up. "There is no other explanation for why he wouldn't have hounded me for my burger."

  


Fraser looks almost like he might be about to argue on another point - the same point that had first struck Ray when he'd walked in the door, but now that he had searched the whole house and had failed to come up with a wolf corpse, Diefenbaker was officially missing and he would not believe anything else until irrefutable evidence proved him otherwise. No sir, this was a missing person's case, doggy-amber-alert. 

  


"Who would have taken him?" Fraser asks. "It would have taken some work." 

  


Meaning, Diefenbaker wouldn't have gone with anyone he didn't know or trust without a fight, or maybe a lot of bacon or some drugs or something. Ray sits down on the floor and thinks about it. He still hasn't taken his shoes off, and his food is over on the hall table, and this was supposed to be just a regular day. Fraser sits down next to him, and they lean shoulder to shoulder for the comfort while they think. It's a habit for Ray, the contact is reassuring.

  


"No you were right, the door was still locked. Who else but you and me has a key? I mean you can't un-pick a lock so it's locked again, right?" 

  


"Well," Starts Fraser, and Ray senses the oncoming of one of his 'real-live-inuit-stories'. Ray's learned that these are just the kinds of things that Fraser says when he's not sure what he needs to say - it's just the way he knows to comfort himself, and give himself a moment to think. It's as if he's channeling his own grandpa, and giving himself some kind of not remotely useful advice. "I once knew a young man in a village up north who would force a thin piece of ice into a lock once he'd picked it to hold the pins in place."

  


"Oh god Fraser you're not going to tell me that this guy came all the way here, ten years later, just to steal our wolf."

  


"No." Fraser says, "Just that it's possible to re-set a lock with melting ice after you leave."

  


They sit like that, back to back, both thinking. 

  


"I almost had a heart attack when I came home and he didn't show up." Ray says, after a long moment. He could never not talk to Fraser now. It was just that when the easy silence fell, and it was actually okay for him to talk into it and not all of his words were expected to make more sense than they had to because Fraser just understood  him.  Stella would have told him to be quiet, or that she'd fix the problem herself and he didn't even have to worry about it, except how could he not worry. "I mean, he's an old wolf."

  


Fraser doesn't admit that he had the same thought, because he doesn't have to. They're both looking different directions, but Fraser leans a little harder into him, and Ray realizes that sitting on the floor is probably killing his leg, but Fraser isn't complaining yet and he is the toughest person Ray has ever met. 

  


"I mean nothing ever keeps him from sharing a little bacon with me." Ray says, admitting to a lot of sins in the past that Fraser would scold him for, but must surely already know about. He's not a hard taskmaster, but he does take care of his family a little better than his family would take care of itself if left to it's own bachelor-and-wolf ways. 

  


"Today is not that day, Ray."

  


"It won't change between us, right?" Ray asks, ludicrously. His mouth is doing that working ahead of his mind thing. "I mean, when that day comes."

  


"Diefenbaker is part of our family." Fraser says. "But not the whole of it." 

  


"Yeah, but he was around before I was." Ray says. He isn't jealous of Diefenbaker, but he's worried about the sort of wound that it will leave on Fraser - someone who is so attached to what friends he has. Hell, the guy talks almost as much to Diefenbaker as he does to Ray, and it's part of Fraser that Ray likes. He doesn't talk to him like he's just some dumb wolf - and that extends to Ray, too. Fraser's respectful tone extends to everything - even the turtle, occasionally, though Fraser says that Don's not much of a conversationalist, and Ray agrees.

  


"Ray." Fraser says, attracting his attention. Ray looks over his shoulder. "I'll need you, afterward."

  


And god, his tone sounds almost apologetic, and there's that deep fear of loss in his eyes. It's a deep, haunted look, that Ray recognizes from when they were both really new at this whole being together thing, and Ray just couldn't trust himself not to stuff his foot in the mouth at the wrong moment or somehow ruin the entire thing and not know what he did, like he'd pulled the wrong piece out of the jenga stack.

  


"Hey, Frayz." He says. "Benton." 

  


Fraser arches his brows upward, attentive.

  


"You always got me, okay? I mean you got crappy taste, 'cause you could have anybody, but you always got me." 

  


Fraser's mouth turns up a little at the corners for that. Ray feels a new enthusiasm.

  


"And besides, you're right. Today isn't that day - Dief  practically chased a squirrel up a whole entire tree this morning. We just gotta figure out who took him, that's all."  Ray huffs out a chuckle, and then leans over to press his forehead against Fraser's temple. He's pretty sure it's inappropriate right now to kiss him, or mention that Fraser had left that unspoken promise after lunch, but he thinks about it a little, and then gets up.

  


"C'mon you, up - your leg." Ray offers his hands, even though Fraser doesn't need the help up, and Fraser takes them, just for the contact. "Let's make some missing dog posters - hey, no, we gotta say he's a husky, or the neighbors will freak. Quit lookin' at me like that, I know it's an insult, but I'd rather have him back without extra holes from crazy people shooting him."

  


-

  


  


They print fifty of them, and put them up in the neighborhood. Fraser makes a thorough examination of the ground outside the doors, and concludes that the front door was probably the one used - but he can't follow a scent trail and the physical trail disappears when it reaches the paved street. Ray can tell that pains him - it's just a part of living in the city that Fraser is basically incompatible with - the ground does not take a mark from passage here because it's been beaten into submission. There is so much passage that it's given up trying to record all of it. 

  


Ray gets the equally frustrating job of calling Franny and finding out if for some unknown reason she's decided to take up wolfnapping. Ray makes it through five word mis-usages before he starts to correct her, and things degenerate from there. The conversation boils down to she doesn't have the wolf. No one they know in the area does. There are no calls from the 'lost Husky' posters.

  


"Maybe he headed back to Canada." Fraser tries, one night when he's too busy worrying to do his paperwork - which he was too busy fretting to do during the day. Ray leans over his shoulder, a heavy comforting weight like he knows he likes when he feels like that - and he kind of does, but he has as much faith in Diefenbaker to take care of himself as he does Fraser.

  


"He likes Pizza too much, and he's always the first one to make us turn on the heat in the winter. I mean that would have to be some pretty strong call of the wild action, there, to make him quit The Price is Right cold turkey."

  


"Well, there comes a time in every life where it inevitably longs for things past and wishes to return to the root of things." Fraser says, and then leans forward on his elbows. Ray slides his arms under Fraser's, around his chest - though the back of the chair digs in underneath his collarbone.  "There is a comfort in familiarity, Ray."

  


"Chicago is pretty familiar by now, Fraser." Ray says, sensing that the conversation may not entirely be about their wayward wolf companion. "He's had more than ten years to live here. I mean, it hasn't exactly been torture, has it?"

  


A lot of bad things had happened, sure.  Ray never got a promotion and he kicked his own ass every day over big heavy issues, but he always was happy when he came home. Fraser had gotten shot the once, and now he had to carry that around every day, but he didn't have to do it alone. Neither of them did. So what if Ray's joints felt like those of an eighty year old and he'd developed a giant aversion for all things stair-shaped. So what, if Fraser limped a little in the cold and didn't throw himself off of buildings so much any more. So what if Diefenbaker  was advancing in his years.

  


"Hey." Ray says, after a moment of silence - Fraser's thinking, but he's not debating, Ray knows that by now. He doesn't get antsy at every long silence anymore, and he's so good now at not being so leery of the worst possible thing happening at any given moment. "Fraser."

  


Benton looks back at him, over his shoulder. It's hard to meet his gaze at this proximity and angle, so instead, Ray presses a kiss to the corner of Fraser's mouth. "Do you want to move to Canada?"

  


Because Ray will, Ray so totally will. Fraser hadn't moved here for Ray exactly, but he'd come back and stayed for Ray. Moved into a house with Ray and the turtle, and put the piece back into Ray's life that it had been missing for so long. Now that he's got Fraser, he won't give the guy up for something so simple as his job, or the fact that they finally paid off the house, or his love of the local italian place.

  


This, Fraser does debate. He really is thinking about it, and Ray's glad - because a fast answer 'no' would leave him doubting, and a fast answer 'yes' would leave him wondering about the past. Finally, Fraser shakes his head.

  


"I think that when I got there, I'd find that I already have what I think I'm trying to find there." Fraser says, and then scoots his chair back so that he can stand up into Ray's embrace without the chair being in the way. 

  


"What, Ice?" Ray asks, and he can feel that smile working right over his features, in his eyes more than his mouth, the corners of them where those lines are getting deeper every day. He likes them, he thinks after a moment. 

  


"Not Ice," answers Fraser. 

  


"Yak jerky?" 

  


"Pemmican is only partly dried meat, and since Yak are not readily available in the northern territories-"

  


"Just say 'no', Fraser."

  


"Not pemmican, then."

  


Ray kisses him, for-real kisses him. Things may have gotten a little slower between them - newness tends to wear off pretty quick anyway, but it's comfortable and old. It's like the best part of a fire, where you can sit right next to the hearth and it's exactly the right temperature. Fraser leans into it, and it's not a clash, it's familiar. A give and take, and maybe Fraser was right about that whole comforting familiarity thing.

  


"Frayz," Ray says into the tiny space between them, when the kiss ends. "First, I love you." Those words are so easy to say to Fraser, who always smiles like he's just won the lottery. It's nothing like Stella who would nag him about when he didn't say it, because she couldn't understand that he would have just never stopped saying it. With Fraser, Ray has learned to pace himself. "Second, we're going to find Diefenbaker."

  


Because the Diefenbaker shaped hole in their life is noticeable - as much as they owe their lives to each other, they equally seem to owe them to the wolf, too. Ray could think of a dozen incidents offhand where Diefenbaker had distracted a gun-toting criminal, risking life and limb as surely as Fraser would have in the same situation, though hopefully the mountie would have solved the problem with slightly less biting.

  


"You're right, Ray." Fraser answers, and kisses Ray back for a long time. Between them, it's well rehearsed. Ray drops his button up shirt on the floor somewhere halfway down the hall - right in the middle of Fraser's stupid oriental runner. He gets Fraser's own ugly checkered flannel that he somehow manages to make look good off in the doorway. 

  


It's four backing-up steps to the bed, and Ray stops before he'd topple onto it to get Fraser's jeans off, and while they aren't kissing the -entire- time, they are a lot of it. Fraser's hands are big and warm, resting against Ray's lower ribs while Ray works his fly, their foreheads together and both looking down to watch. There's no rush - it's this easy, comfortable pace between them.

  


Ray's halfway through shimmying out of his own pants when a faint scratching noise catches his attention. Fraser's head snaps up too, turns back toward the kitchen. His superman hearing gives him more of a chance to hone in on it. 

  


"Did..?" Fraser begins, but Ray's alert posture - poised though he is with one leg raised and both his fists full of jeans - cues him in to the answer to that question. 

  


"Probably just something brushing by the house - branches or something." Ray says, pulling his pants the rest of the way off. Fraser nods, and they both reach for each other again. Ray is using one foot to pry the sock off his other foot when the barking starts.

  


"Diefenbaker!" They both recognize, breaking their kiss with pants as Fraser scrambles away for the back door - in utter dishevel. He is at least still in his longjohns, and while Ray is wearing his undershirt and boxers, he opts to pause and yank on some sweat pants before joining Fraser in flinging open the door to the wild word beyond.

  


Diefenbaker comes in muddy, with a pink bow tied around his neck, and carrying an old garden trowel, which he drops triumphantly onto the kitchen floor with a thunk while both Fraser and Ray stare at him in disbelief. There is no one else outside.

  


Fraser catches Dief's attention with his hand, and the wolf looks up at him to read his lips or his mind or whatever it was a deaf wolf did to communicate. 

  


"Where have you been?" Fraser asks, like the wolf was a kid or something - and in a way, it was kind of like that.  Diefenbaker doesn't respond, of course, he just opens his mouth, corners turned upward in that expression of supreme happiness and self satisfaction that canines seem to wear so well.

  


"You need a bath." Ray says.  

  


Diefenbaker heads for the bathroom, but Fraser scoops him up before he can put his muddy paws all over the runner in the hall - which Ray thinks that Dief hates about as much as he does. 

  


The one great thing about this place, the house that they'd bought together, was that it had this giant shower stall. All three of them pile in there, and it makes it easier to get Diefenbaker to bathe if they both have to subject themselves to it, too. Ray works on undoing the pink ribbon while Fraser gets the water going, and it takes a group effort to get all the mud that's caked in Dief's fur out, and someone is going to have to clean it out of the bottom of the shower later, but for now that doesn't even matter.

  


Ray crouches down and soaps behind Diefenbaker's ears and tells him, quietly, that it's good to have him back, and he owes three days of old man pills. Dief mouths the side of his head affectionately and then things are going to be okay, Ray thinks. Not that they wouldn't have been before, but he just wasn't ready for them to be okay and without Diefenbaker yet.

  


Maybe, that was partly what this was about. 

  


"You think he was trying to get us ready for life without him?" Ray asks, over his shoulder. Fraser's hair is plastered down onto his forehead, and he's washing mud off his hands. He thinks about it for a second, blocking the hot water.

  


"Diefenbaker is right here, Ray. I think he'll be offended if we talk as if he isn't." Fraser laughs a little, and that's all it takes. Ray opens the shower stall door and tosses a towel on the floor so that Dief can roll around on it and dry himself off, the way he likes. They'll get him the rest of the way dry later.

  


"Crisis averted." Ray says, and kisses Fraser again. "And we didn't even have to move to Canada." 

  


The shower is no substitute for the bed, and they  have to deal with the peanut gallery making impatient noises on the other side of the stall door, but their relationship has survived a lot worse. Ray only starts to rush when the water starts coming out cooler against his back, his coaxing turning frantic as Fraser's knees threaten to give and they both press their quiet noises into each other's wet necks. 

  


Fraser has the presence of mind afterward to turn the water off, as they both lean heavily against each other, an awkward tangle of limbs that somehow works anyway.

  


"We'll have to take down the posters tomorrow." Fraser says, into Ray's hair, and Ray squints at him while he gets his breath back, disbelieving of the directions that post-sex Fraser's mind went to. He finds himself smiling anyway, but more wryly this time.

  


"Tomorrow is the Canadian Arts and Culture Appreciation Festival." Ray reminds. 

  


Fraser groans. 

  


"Yep. I have the same idea, buddy." Ray replies, and they hoist each other out of the shower into Diefenbaker's disapproving glare. He's laying on his towel imperiously, waiting to be let back out into the house.

  


"You're missing 'Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader'," Ray tells him, while they towel off. Diefenbaker's expression turns sharp and scolding, and Ray laughs, then gives him a better toweling and lets him out. 

  


"He's going to get the couch wet." Fraser says, halfway through brushing his teeth.

  


"Let him." Ray says, thinking 'as long as he's on it'.  They both are, he thinks, since Fraser doesn't argue anymore before he comes to bed, with the sound of the television on low in the living room. 

  


\----

  


Ray's considering spitting one of the chalky, nasty pills into the sink when Diefenbaker puts his paw on Ray's foot for attention, and stares solemnly up at Ray when he looks down. 

  


"What?" Ray asks, feeling scolded. "I'm eating it, okay, come on."  Sticking his tongue out, Ray lets Diefenbaker observe the half-chewed white chunky bits that coated it. The wolf seems satisfied when he swallows it.

  


"You happy now?"

  


Ray thinks that talking to the wolf is probably not the worst habit of Fraser's that could have rubbed off on him.

  


"Let's get a donut, buddy, huh?" 

  


Diefenbaker gets to his feet with a sprightliness that defies his age, ears perked forward in obvious anticipation. Ray thinks they're going to be sharing mornings and donuts for a long time to come. 


End file.
